System and method for monitoring advertisement assignment

Abstract

A method is disclosed which emulates accessing web sites by a simulated web visitor. The characteristics of the web user may be controlled as may be the timing and number of visits and the nature of the web sites visited. During the emulated visits cookies of the web visitor are modified. The emulated visits may be directed to a sub-group of web sites which are engaged in agreements granting them reward for the provision of data indicative of the nature of past web visits, and to a sub-group of web sites which are not engaged in such agreements. Comparison of the exposure of the emulated web visitor to advertisements in each of the sub groups may be analyzed to indicate whether the agreements are properly executed and the reward is properly given.

Description

CROSS REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS[0001]This Application claims the benefit of U.S. Provisional Application Ser. No. 61 / 235,375, filed Aug. 20, 2009, which is hereby incorporated by reference in its entirety.BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION[0002]Web sites in a wide area network, such as the Internet, which offer merchandise and / or services are visited by net surfers (herein after visitors) looking for the merchandise or service offered by these sites. The mere fact that a certain visitor has visited a certain web site constitutes information characterizing the visitor with respect to the merchandise or service offered by the visited web site. The visited web site may instruct the visitor's surfing program, such as a WEB browser, to store indication of this information in the visitor's computer or other platform used by the visitor, for example by ‘planting’ a cookie or cookies on storage means of the visitor's computer. This characterizing information is valuable for advertisers, wh...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

Enables data providers to verify the fulfillment of advertising contracts by simulating user interactions and analyzing advertisement exposure, ensuring proper compensation and preventing misuse of their data, thereby protecting their business interests.

Problems solved by technology

Considering the above, a data provider may find it rather complicated to verify the fulfillment of the agreement, or contract, he has with the data buyer in two aspects.

The difficulties to verify a proper reward to a data provider may be due to the fact that the parameters used for calculating the reward are usually not available to a data provider.

Second, in cases where the data provider has asserted ‘negative conditions’ for the use of the data provided by him, for example, preventing the use of such data to invoke advertisements of his or her competitors (defined as part of the ‘black list’ as described above).

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